Born in a Small Town Page 22

  Put on the spot, Melanie was tempted to hedge. She’d been trying in vain to think of some way of broaching the subject. Or perhaps she simply hadn’t wanted to put into words a failure as great as her marriage.

  Instead, she said honestly, “I’m…not sure I’ll be seeing him again.”

  Angie spun around. Milk splattered. “Why not?”

  “You’re spilling,” Melanie said automatically. “And I decided not to keep seeing him because he probably won’t be in Elk Springs next year, anyway.”

  Tears welled up in Angie’s eyes. “Doesn’t he want to take us with him?”

  “Take us…?” Melanie’s breath whooshed out and she went to her daughter, gently taking the milk from her. “Oh, honey.” Melanie tried to enfold her in a hug.

  Angie jerked back, glaring through her tears. “I thought you’d marry him! I thought he’d be my dad!”

  Melanie swallowed, a lump in her throat. “Kevin’s job means he moves a lot. Every couple of years. You know he was a park ranger, and he’s thinking of going back to that. If he does, he’ll always be living out in the middle of nowhere. You’d have long bus rides to school and maybe no friends your age as neighbors, and I’d have to give up my business.”

  “So?” Pain and rebellion in every line of her thin body, Angie evaded another attempt to hug her. “He told me all about the places he’s been. They’re so cool! I want to leave Elk Springs. I hate Elk Springs.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do mean it! I do! I want to go with Kevin!” Bursting into tears, Angie ran from the room.

  Melanie stood in the middle of the kitchen, listening to her daughter’s feet thunder up the stairs. She felt more inadequate than she ever had in her life, even when she’d realized that Ryan didn’t want the home she was trying to make.

  Sinking into a straight-backed kitchen chair, she buried her face in her hands. Why hadn’t she foreseen this? Angie had never really had a father. Of course she’d fallen in love with Kevin! How could she help it, when he had always been willing to include her, always treated her like an equal, had even done something as special as helping coach her soccer team.

  Angie just didn’t understand what they would both be giving up if her mom married Kevin. She didn’t remember much from before the divorce. Always feeling rootless—she had no idea what that was like. How important it was to know where you belonged.

  Melanie knew she should let her daughter cry, wait until a cooler moment. Her own tears crowded her eyelids, as they had all day. But she couldn’t let Angie mourn by herself upstairs, while she sat here at the kitchen table feeling more alone than she had in years. Alone and scared and hollow.

  Using a paper towel to scrub away the dampness on her cheeks, she went slowly upstairs. She let her hand slide along the banister. When, as a child, she visited Nana, she’d often slid down the banister. She suspected Angie did, too. The walnut was polished from a hundred years of hands and bottoms, wearing it to a fine patina.

  Family photographs hung along the staircase. At the bottom, Nana’s parents, posing with a Model T Ford, her mother wrapped in fur, little guessing what the Great Depression would bring. Nana as a girl, eyes big and solemn, and as a young woman with her first teaching job.

  The years passed as Melanie climbed, the silky wood trailing beneath her fingertips.

  Granddad, fine in his wedding suit. A few steps up hung the photo of him in front of his first store. Then the two together, bowed by the years, but proud in front of this house, bought in the early years of their marriage. Their daughter, baby pictures to wedding pictures. Melanie herself, as well as her much younger sister. And finally, Angie.

  This house was their history, Melanie thought sadly. Her daughter’s and hers. So why tonight did Nana seem to look back at her with reproach? Why was it so obvious that the photographs could be hung anywhere, that she, Melanie, took her memories and her heritage with her wherever she went?

  She knocked on the door to Angie’s bedroom. A small voice said, “Go away.”

  “Please.” Melanie bit her lip. “Can we talk?”

  She took the silence for assent and opened the door. Angie had flung herself down on her four-poster, face in her pillow.

  Melanie sat beside her and gently rubbed her back. “Maybe I made the wrong choice,” she said sadly, “but I’ve told you before how much I hated moving. I never had a friend longer than three years, until I came home to Elk Springs. I didn’t want that for you.”

  “But he could be my dad.” Angie said through her tears. “I’m good at making friends. I wouldn’t mind new friends.”

  “This house…”

  With sudden passion, Angie rolled over, her body stiff. “You always said people are what’s important. Not things.”

  Melanie’s tears began to fall, hot and slow. “I did, didn’t I?”

  “I guess you can’t marry him just so he can be my dad. Not if you don’t want to.”

  Oh, but she did want to!

  “My work…”

  Her daughter squeezed her hand and said, voice tentative, “Couldn’t you keep making clothes and sell them somewhere? Or…or keep renting them, like you do now, but have someone else do it?”

  Could she afford to pay overhead on a shop that wasn’t connected to her house? And someone’s salary? And who could she trust long-distance?

  Suddenly she was thinking. It might be possible. Or what if she started a catalog, something she’d given passing thought to. Might there be other Park Service wives who’d be interested in working for her?

  “I like walking to the bakery on Saturday mornings.” Knowing how dumb that sounded, she said it, anyway.

  “We don’t every week.”

  “But we can.”

  Her daughter’s forehead crinkled. “Wouldn’t you like to walk somewhere different?”

  No. That was the trouble. She wanted the familiar, not the new. She hadn’t an adventurous bone in her body. But…might she be willing to walk somewhere different, to take the chance that it would become familiar, if the right person was beside her?

  The answer was so obvious she knew her foolishness wasn’t safely stowed with the ruined silk in the garbage can.

  People were what mattered. Love was what bound her to her daughter and her parents and grandparents and their parents before them. This house…had been a refuge. She did love it, but it couldn’t hold her, make her laugh, dry her tears, smile at her in the morning and bed her with passion at night. No house could give Angie what she needed.

  Melanie had hated moving so often, both as a child and as a young wife. But would she have been so unhappy if Ryan had been different? If he had come home eagerly, played with his daughter, helped paint each new apartment? If instead of being impatient and irritated, wanting only to hang out with his new teammates, he had teased her and helped with the moves? If he had truly loved her, and she him?

  If he had been Kevin?

  “With Kevin,” Melanie said softly to Angie, “I might like walking anywhere at all.”

  The dawning joy in her daughter’s eyes matched her own. “Then…you changed your mind?”

  Fear still gripped her heart, but a shaky smile showed itself. “Yes. Yes,” she said wonderingly. “I think I have.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  ANGIE HAD A FRIEND over, so Melanie didn’t think much about the whispering and thumps she heard from other parts of the house. Once, when the door to her sewing room creaked, she called out, “Angie? What are you doing in there?”

  “Showing Samantha some of the dresses.” Wide-eyed, Angie had appeared in the doorway to the living room. “That’s okay, isn’t it, Mom?”

  “Sure,” she’d said absently. Her mind was on more than whether two eight-year-old girls would be careful with the costumes. She was trying to figure out how you called a man you had brutally rejected and said, Gosh, I’ve changed my mind. Ask me again.

  She’d hurt him; Melanie knew she had. What if he’d changed
his mind? She’d basically told him that she didn’t love him enough to make any adjustment whatsoever in her life for his sake. Would it be any wonder if she’d killed his love?

  Finally, heart pounding, Melanie picked up the phone and dialed his number. She owed him at least this much. Besides, for her own sake, as well as Angie’s, she had to do something other than wait and hope.

  As the telephone rang, her throat closed with terror. If he’d answered, her voice probably would have failed altogether. As it was, she listened to his voice message, took a deep breath and said, “This is Melanie. I, um, I’ve been thinking. I did say I would.” She sounded timid, like somebody calling to ask for a loan. “Could we—” her voice squeaked “—well, could we talk again?”

  She dropped the phone back into the cradle as if it were roasting hot and buried her face in her hands. She’d sounded like an idiot! Would he even bother to call her back? She should have gone over there, instead!

  Which would have done no good since he obviously wasn’t home.

  Obviously? Heck, for all she knew, he’d been sitting there listening to her talk to his answering machine.

  Melanie’s hands muffled her whimper.

  The house was awfully silent now. She could hear her own heartbeat. If the phone rang, it would scare her out of her skin. Melanie lifted her head and stared at it.

  Would he call back? Come over? What if he did show up only to say, Sorry, too little, too late?

  She realized five minutes had passed and she was still staring at the phone, as if willing life into it. Do something! she ordered herself.

  Pay bills. That would do to keep her mind occupied, give new direction to her brooding. A cherry secretary desk, inherited from Nana along with the house, stood by the small-paned front windows. In the cubbies, Melanie kept bills, receipts, envelopes and stamps.

  This month’s check statement had arrived and was still unopened. She took out a calculator and soon discovered her checkbook was $2.49 off. In her favor, but she was determined to find the error, anyway. Doggedly she pursued it, but kept finding herself staring at the string of nonsensical numbers on the calculator. Concentrate! she told herself fiercely.

  She almost managed, which might be why it took a moment for the murmur of voices in the hall to register. One of those voices was more of a…rumble. Distinctly masculine. And it said something like, “Thanks. Now go upstairs and don’t come down until I call you. Promise?”

  Melanie surfaced; her calculator read $1,973.73. Why, she didn’t know. Her checking account rarely held that much money, and certainly didn’t right now.

  …don’t come down until I call you?

  Trembling, she swung in her chair to face the doorway. Through it strolled a Victorian gentleman in an elegant brocade smoking jacket, cravat and black trousers, with a pipe nonchalantly held between his teeth. A large handsome gentleman with russet hair and gray eyes.

  “Kevin?” she said faintly.

  He took the pipe from his mouth and said agreeably, “Indeed, my dear. But not the Kevin you know. This one is a fellow of means dressed to reflect his domestic contentment.” He did a slow turn, as she had when showing students the garments. “He’s pleased to be home, man of the house.”

  She gaped.

  His expression changed. The pipe clattered to an end table. Voice hoarse, he said, “If you’ll let him be.”

  “I made that jacket.” As if it mattered.

  “Jacket?” Kevin looked down at himself and gripped the lapels. “You mean, this bathrobe thing?”

  “It’s a smoking jacket.”

  “Oh.” His face held heart-stopping vulnerability when he looked up. “Angie said it’s what a father would wear at home. When he really belonged.”

  She still sat in the straight-backed Queen Anne chair. Her mind didn’t seem to quite grasp the implications. “I just called you,” she said stupidly. “Did you already get my message?”

  “Message?”

  “Wait!” Melanie remembered the door to her sewing room opening and closing, the whispers and shuffles. With near outrage, she asked, “You’ve been here all this time?”

  “Well…” He shifted uneasily. “For twenty minutes or half an hour. It took us a while to find the right outfit. Angie wanted me to be a cowboy and lasso you. I had to convince her that wasn’t the right message.”

  “Angie conspired with you?” Of course she had! Wasn’t that what he’d been telling her?

  “I’m afraid so,” he said apologetically. “But I did ask her.”

  Melanie frowned. “She didn’t call you?”

  “No, I called her. Once I realized.”

  Finally they’d arrived at the heart of the matter. “Realized what?” she almost whispered.

  “That Elk Springs is home now.” His voice took on a rough urgency. “That you’re what I’ve been looking for. You and Angie. I don’t want to go back to the Park Service. I’ve been happier here these past months than I’ve been in years. Ever.” He closed the few feet between them and dropped to one knee in front of her, seizing her hands in his. “Melanie, marry me. I won’t uproot you. I swear.”

  Her fingers curled to grasp his. “But…you can.”

  There was a momentary silence as he studied her in perplexity. “Can what?”

  “Uproot me.” In a rush she said, “That’s why I called you. To say that I did think, like I said I would. And I realized that I don’t want to be left behind. If…if you really love me, I’ll go anywhere with you.”

  “But you’ve told me how much you hated moving!”

  “It wouldn’t be my first choice,” she admitted.

  “It was hard when I was a kid. I’d be dumped into a new school, and when I walked into class the first day, it always felt as if everyone was sneering. I was never wearing the right clothes or…” She stopped.

  “That doesn’t matter. The thing is, I could have been happy with Ryan if he’d been different. If our marriage had been different. Mostly, I was unhappy with him. I was…like a girlfriend, not a wife. I was desperately trying to create a home everywhere we went, and he didn’t want one. The guys were all single.” She concluded simply, “He wanted to be one of them.”

  Kevin’s grip tightened. “He must have been crazy.”

  “I’ve thought of ways I could continue working,” Melanie continued on a flood of hope. “No matter where we go.”

  “And Angie?”

  “She makes friends easily.” It was painful to admit the problem had always been hers, never her child’s. “Having a real father would mean more to her than anything in the world.”

  Kevin squeezed his eyes shut and bowed his head for a moment. Melanie’s heart cramped. Had she said something wrong? Was he having second thoughts now?

  But when he looked up, exultation blazed from his eyes. “You have no idea what it means to me to have you willing to give up every damned thing you value to come with me.”

  She blinked back tears. “We can put the house up for sale. Or…or keep it as a rental. Maybe someday…”

  “Not someday.” He let go of her hands to frame her face, to brush his thumbs over her mouth.

  “We’re going to live here, sweetheart. The college has asked me to stay on, to build a new program in park management that will offer a four-year degree. I’ve accepted. I could buy a house of my own, but—” he glanced around “—this one looks appropriate for a college professor. If you don’t mind sharing it.”

  “You’re doing this for me.” That was all she could think. He was offering to give up everything he valued, for her. Hot tears welled in her eyes.

  His fingertips caught the tears. Voice low and tender, Kevin said, “A selfish part of me wants to say yes. Let you think I’ve made a sacrifice. But the truth is, falling in love with you has made me understand a little sooner what I really want out of life.”

  “And that is?” She held her breath.

  “You.” His lips were against her cheek now, warm, seeking. “Angi
e. Friends. Family. Home.”

  Their mouths met for a soft sweet kiss. Melanie’s mind became hazy, but she had enough sanity to argue before it was too late.

  “But…when you talked about your job and the places you’ve been…” She groped for the right words and found them. “You had such passion.”

  “Yeah, I did.” He stood and pulled her up with him. “But I was also lonely. I didn’t quit just because I got shot, Melanie. I wasn’t lying when I told you I’d been unhappy before that. My job had changed, I didn’t like the new direction, and… I guess I’d reached an age where I was looking around and noticing that everyone else had something I didn’t. Home and family.” He gave a short laugh.

  “Maybe it was Scott’s letters that did it. The guy dove into the family thing from the high platform. He and Meg adopted a little girl, Meg had a teenage boy already, and then Meg got pregnant. Every letter he wrote was so damned happy, I could hardly stand it. Now I know—he had the right idea.”

  Melanie felt as if she were in free fall. No, a parachute had caught her; she was floating now, not tumbling. “Does that mean, um, that you might like to have other children?”

  A sexy grin blazed on his face. “Oh, I’m counting on it, sweetheart.” His hands were wrapped around her waist, his thumbs grazing the underside of her breasts. “Unless you have some objection.”

  “No.” Blast it, she was crying again. “None,” she blubbered.

  He kissed her fiercely. Against her mouth, he said huskily, “I wish we could start right now. But I’m not that sure my orders will be followed.”

  “You mean, to stay upstairs?” Through her tears, a giggle rose in her throat. “I’m pretty sure I just heard a bump in the hall.”

  “What?” He swung around and roared, “Angie Parker, you come out this minute!”

  The doorway stayed empty for a moment. Then Angie edged into sight, head bowed, sneaking a peek up. “I’m sorry,” she said remorsefully. “I just couldn’t wait! But I did make Samantha stay up there.” A tiny smile puckered the dimple in her cheek. “Mommy said yes, didn’t she?”